[Civ2] Civilization II MGE User Interface Additions (CIV2UIA)

[Ivan the Kulak]

Good information, I didn't know about the other one byte vars, I suspected that was the case with unit numbers, however. What and where is your mod with the altered var types?

I wish they would redo this whole game and sell it on Steam. They could fix issues like this, expand units.gif so you could have more, same with techs, let you easily mod the tech tree and civilopedia with a lot more stuff, select custom music tracks, allow for a lot more custom sounds, etc.

I'd get out my wallet in a heartbeat.

 

[duplj]

Good information, I didn't know about the other one byte vars, I suspected that was the case with unit numbers, however. What and where is your mod with the altered var types?

you can see here at the very end

Spoiler link :

D

[Civ2] Thread 'Civ2 MGE several fixes and additions with support for music tracks'

Mar 10, 2024

This Civ2 executive file for version 5.4.0f MGE has been modified by adding additional code. What features have been added:
1. Applied NOCD patch and Civ2x64EditboxPatcher patch to fix crashes on 64-bit systems
2. This executive file contains the ability to listen to tracks from the MUSIC folder. Playable format WAV 44100/22050khz 8/16bit stereo/mono. Tracks are checked for a name in the form TRACK**, so it is advisable to start the initial track with 01 with the possibility of increasing to 99 pieces. Sound playback uses the standard game procedure sndPlaySoundA in asynchronous mode. A...

• duplj
• Replies: 115
• Forum: Civ2 - General Discussions

• 

if you have any questions about the mod, write there

 

[Blake00]

I wish they would redo this whole game and sell it on Steam. They could fix issues like this, expand units.gif so you could have more, same with techs, let you easily mod the tech tree and civilopedia with a lot more stuff, select custom music tracks, allow for a lot more custom sounds, etc.

Yup, would make life so much easier for returning fans. We're trying but not much luck so far..
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...i-mge-test-of-time-to-be-added-to-gog.675301/
.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

Didn't the number of units another civ has display on the foreign advisor screen, in a previous life (if you had an embassy, I think?)? Can't remember just where. But that is info I would like to have if UIA can display it.

 

[duplj]

Didn't the number of units another civ has display on the foreign advisor screen, in a previous life (if you had an embassy, I think?)? Can't remember just where. But that is info I would like to have if UIA can display it.

This is not related to UIA. As far as I remember, this information is displayed only on the first two easy levels of the game's difficulty

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

Ah, ok. I must be remembering my first games on Chieftan and Warlord. I think this information should be available on all levels as it can really help you decide whether to go to war or not. All nations gather this info IRL. If they don't - well, look what happened to Hitler. "Nein, nein, those commies are rotten! They cannot possibly have that many tanks!" IDK if it can be added via UIA or not. Even better would be if your spy or diplomat had the option to "Steal Plans" for gold, but I don't expect UIA to be able to modify THAT.

 

[FoxAhead]

The main goal of UIA is to preserve vanilla rules. More distant plans (but most likely unrealistic) are to add maximum customization for each option, including game-changing ones, if someone needs it.
For now, if you want to see the number of units at any difficulty level, then, please, hex-edit CIV2.EXE as follows (change 01 to 0F at offset 0x30182):

 

[SteamCiv]

I got this setup to work without too much trouble and attempted to run a Fantastic Worlds scenario and the dinos disappeared into the terrain and could not see them well even at max zoom in.

Spent quite a bit of time looking all through the internet looking to see how to scale the program trying this and that.
Eventually Wondered what the triangle did at the left top of the game window IT CHANGEs SONGS, (THAT will be handy).
Then tried clicking on one of the square boxes in the upper left and the game zoomed in a bit, and a BIT MORE
I kept hitting it that box on the left and the map kept ZOOMING IN !
Hallelujah! POSTER SIZE DINOs !

Somehow I missed reading that in the documentation!
THANKS FOR DOING THAT, a main gripe on older games is that they display TOO SMALL on large monitors but delightfully, FoxAhead, you included that feature and I thank you heartily!

FYI On other games Blinue's MAGPIE is a good program scaler for a lot of other older games such as Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, Rise of Nations and others (but it wont work nor is it needed on Civ2.exe)

 

[Kepa Jote]

Thank you very much for your work FoxAhead , a couple years ago I returned to Civ2 thanks to you.

I have a few suggestions, the first one I think could be easy, the other two may be impossible:

-In the shift+G dialog for caravan trade, is it possible to sort the cities by income? In a scenario with let's say one hundred cities it's very hard to find what the best trades are.

-In the military advisor of the game I noticed the counter resets after 255 or 256 units. Can it be fixed?

-Everyone who has played Civ2 until late game or big scenarios must have noticed very big AI civs start doing capitalization on all its cities. I could never figure out what was the reason, but recently I found Civ2 TOTP fixed it for Civ2 Test of Time, apparently there's a limit of 512 units per civ, once a civ hits 512 units all cities do capitalization. Is it possible to fix it for Civ2 MGE? I quote from Civ2 TOTPP:

Adds configurable tweaks for AI behaviour to @COSMIC2.

Available keys are:

• AICapitalizationLimit: Number of units after which the AI switches to Capitalization. Default is 512.
• BarbOffensiveUnitLimit: Maximum number of offensive barbarian units per landmass. When this limit is reached, barbarian cities stop producing units. Default is 16, set to -1 for unlimited.
• BarbUnitSupport: When set to 1, allows barbarian units to have a home city. Normally, barbarian-produced units have none. Defaults to 0.
• BarbResearch: When set to 1, allows the barbarian tribe to own technologies. Defaults to 0.

 

[Kepa Jote]

Thanks to the amazing feature of being able to see the trade route paths I did some tests to figure out the strange behavior of trade connection bonus in Civ2.

-Trade route bonus are lost if there's a foreign unit on the way (even caravans or diplomats!). Units from allied civs do not block it.
-Trade route bonus are lost if there's a foreign city on the way. Even if you are allied.
-If a trade route goes through one of your own cities first you receive the bonus of the conection between your cities. But:
-The max distance is always 22

The first one is exploitable, you can block the trade connection bonus of foreign civs by placing caravans or a couple diplomats in key areas.
The third one is exploitable too, for example if you control South America and have a city in Panama, all your trade with foreign cities in North America will have the ++ bonus of road and railroad, even if there's not a single road in North America. That is if the distance is at most 22.

 

[duplj]

-In the military advisor of the game I noticed the counter resets after 255 or 256 units. Can it be fixed?

-Everyone who has played Civ2 until late game or big scenarios must have noticed very big AI civs start doing capitalization on all its cities. I could never figure out what was the reason, but recently I found Civ2 TOTP fixed it for Civ2 Test of Time, apparently there's a limit of 512 units per civ, once a civ hits 512 units all cities do capitalization. Is it possible to fix it for Civ2 MGE? I quote from Civ2 TOTPP:

Hello
2. This question keeps popping up, literally a page or two ago. These variables are displayed in bytes, and simply changing them won't increase them, meaning this is a limitation of the game itself. The developers allocated a limited space for these variables, although even back then, it was clear that these values could easily exceed 255.
3. This is easy to change. For a game with only 2048 units, the limit of 512 per player seems quite reasonable. However, if the number of squads increases significantly from the active option to the extended squad limit, this value will no longer be so adequate. In any case, you can manually set the value yourself, but you'll have to open the HEX file in an editor and do some finger work

Spoiler hex address :

As far as I remember, the required values are located here. Find the number at offset address 0x009de68 - 02 and replace it with another one, for example, 4, then the limit of units for switching to Capitalization mode will become 1024, and also at this address 0x009d349 and do the same, thereby you will increase the limit for the construction of military units by AI players